


Decisions

by shadowcat500



Series: Wanderlust [5]
Category: Original Work
Genre: AND THERE WAS ONLY ONE BED!, Breakfast, Gen, Getting Breakfast Together, Hotels, i dont know how that ended up captialised but screw its down
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-17
Updated: 2020-06-17
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:35:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24762442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadowcat500/pseuds/shadowcat500
Summary: Rem almost runs, but chooses to stay instead.
Relationships: None
Series: Wanderlust [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1693201
Kudos: 1





	1. Chapter 1

If there’s one thing Karn regrets about joining Gin’s crew, it’s the bed. Well, “bed” in the loosest definition of the term, since “plank of wood that you normally sit on while you steer” isn’t normally what you think when you think bed. He’s lost the nightly coin-flip for the pallet on the kitchen floor four nights in a row (Even when he’s insisted on using one of his own coins for the toss-up. Either Gin is one lucky bastard or better at sleight of hand than he thinks she is.), and his back won’t be letting him forget any time soon. 

So, to put a long story short, he’s been waiting for them to reach port for a while. Port means resupplying, time to himself, and best of all a few nights on still land.  
The inn room is a little on the small side, but that doesn’t matter. They have two beds, a shower, and three nights paid off. The three bags in the corner containing all of his and Gin’s worldly possessions take up so little room it’s almost worrying, but that’s easily forgotten in the wake of an actual bed.

When Gin walks through the door with some random fucker, he immediately decides he is not the one surrendering their bed to them.

***

“Heya, Karn, we’ve got company tonight.”

“Better not be planning what I think you’re planning.” Karn will put up with a lot, but he is _not_ a fan of voyeurism. 

“What? No! They just were freaking out and I felt bad and-” Gin sighs. “Just. We’re putting them up here for tonight. I’m taking the floor. Play nice.” 

Gin turns and leaves the poor person they’ve found standing awkwardly in the middle of the room while she fucks off to the bathroom. The poor thing has a look reminiscent of a cornered puppy, halfway between aggressive and scared shitless, and Karn isn’t a heartless man despite what most of the people he kicked out of the Mainsail Inn would say. So he speaks first. “You can sit down, you know, I’m not gonna kill you for getting muck on the sheets.”

They freeze, before giving a quick nod and awkwardly walking to the other bed with a weird hobbling limp. What’s up with that? “I’m-I’m Rem. Xe/xer.”

"Karn. He/him." Karn nods and goes back to staring at the ceiling. 

***

Gin eventually comes out of the shower and begins making up a pallet with a jacket and a towel. Rem tries to insist on her taking the bed. Gin refuses, and they… politeness-argue??? over it for the better part of half-an-hour. Karn tunes it out and count the pockmarks on the ceiling paint. It’s interesting because it works on the same logic as counting the stars: there’s a whole bloody lot of them and it’s really easy to lose count, so you have to restart constantly.

The argument ends up resolved with Gin agreeing to take the pillow and Rem keeping the rest of the bed. If Karn were in charge, he’d just tell them to share the damn thing and have it over with, but it’s none of his business. What they do with the bed is between them, as long as they leave _his_ bed out of it.

***

Gin snores when she sleeps.

It’s been on Rem’s mind ever since Gin dropped off, gloved hands under her pillow, the soft noises echoing through xer already-busy brain like someone yelling into a subway tunnel.

Xe’s spent the better part of the night tossing and turning, completely unable to keep the thought of xer parent’s man out of xer head. What if he already saw xer? What if he’s coming this way right now? What’ll happen if he brought reinforcements? Gin’s already been so kind… xe doesn’t want her to get hurt, especially not protecting her. She promised to protect xer from some fictional creepy dude, not a dozen mercenaries. 

Xe needs to go. Right now. 

Xe takes her feet out from under the long-crumpled blanket as quietly as possible and puts them down on the opposite side of the bed to Gin’s soft snores. 

“You weren’t running from a random bastard, were you.”

Rem’s halfway to the door when xe freezes up at Karn’s voice. “S-so? What’s it to you?!”

“Gin’d kill me if I let you run off ‘cause you were scared.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

There’s a rustling of cloth as Karn shifts to look at xer properly. “Gin could’ve left me to die without any consequences. In fact, it’d probably have been easier for her to escape without any fuss if she’d left me behind. She didn’t, even though we’d known each other for two days." 

Rem stays quiet. Xe doesn’t know what to take from that, to be honest.

Karn seems to understand. “Look, when she’s got a look in her eye when she looks at you that says that she’s willing to do a lot for you. She won’t bail if she finds out.”

What? “W-well you can tell her in the morning that I didn’t want either of you to get hurt protecting me. You don’t know what I’m running from and I don’t want you to. Just let me go, and you’ll never have to worry about me again.”

“You’re looking at a Neried veteran and a trained martial artist who sleeps with steel strapped to her fists. If you’re worried about us getting hurt, you’re just straight-up wrong.”

“I-I…”

“Just… relax, ok? I’ll wake you and Gin if anything happens.”

“…ok. Ok.” Rem slowly, cautiously, turns and walks back to the bed. “I can do that.” Xe catches just a glint of light reflecting off of Gin’s eyes from the pallet.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rem gets breakfast with Gin.

The morning comes, bright and unwanted, to the small room. 

Gin stirs awake first, sprawled out with one wrist uncomfortably propped up against the wall. It pops with a sharp ache when she moves it, and she stretches the joint as well she can while brushing her hair out of its braid. (Saltwater in waist-length hair is no joke. The braid comes out when she is ashore and at no other time.) 

Rem wakes up second, to the sound of Gin moving around in the bathroom shortly followed by a loud crash.

“Are you okay?” Xe yells.

“Yeah, I think!” comes the reply, shortly after. “Fell off the side of the bathtub!”

Someone bangs on the wall next to them in an unspoken demand for quiet. Rem giggles and goes to get dressed before remembering that xe never got changed last night when xe attempts to take xer shirt off and notices that the fabric feels unusually rough for nightwear, at roughly the same point xe realises xe doesn’t have a comb. Xe settles for running xer fingers through xer hair a few times till it looks somewhat presentable.

Karn sleeps half the damn morning. Well, when “morning” begins at dawn to the judges, it’s quite easy to sleep through half of it, especially when as far as you’re concerned it’s your day off. Gin and Rem leave him in the room while they go find breakfast somewhere.

***

“So, how are you feeling?” Gin asks, mouth full of a pastry Rem doesn’t know the name of. They found a small bakery tucked between a tailor and a cobbler and settled on a small, shared breakfast.

“Much better. Thanks again, by the way. How are you?”

Gin laughs, and for a second Rem thinks that xe’d sell the moon and stars for that wonderfully loud, gawky cackle. “I’m great! It’s amazing what a good sleep and a good breakfast can do, isn’t it?” She takes another bite, chews and swallows it. “But how have things been for you? When’d you get here?”

“A few days ago. Things have been… bad. Can’t find a job and had to spend a bunch on crap I didn’t realise I needed. You know.” Rem takes a bite of xer own pastry. It’s chocolate and raspberry: xe didn’t realise that when xe ordered. “Bad.”

“The pastry?”

“No, circumstances.”

“Well, uh…” Gin looks around, almost looking nervous. Her hair swooshes slightly in the breeze. “Do you wanna join my crew?”

“Your what?”

“My crew! I mean, yeah, we’re kinda small, and our boat can barely fit two people let alone three and-”

“Hell yeah I do!” 

Gin looks shocked, and then grins with all the brightness of Polaris. “Great! I’m Ginohana Cerise!”

“Amazing! I’m Rem Kinata! Nice to meet you!” Rem is somewhat panicking. Xe barely knows Gin beyond Karn’s approximation of her character and what xe’s gotten from Gin’s actions towards xer, and now xe’s agreed to join her crew. Which, last xe checked, was made of only her and Karn. Well done Rem.

“Nice to meet you Rem!” She laughs again, gaining stares from a few people on their morning commute, but she doesn’t seem to care. “I hope you’ll like it aboard the Piranha!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The most surreal part of this story is that I kept putting it timeline-wise somewhere around part eight and got really confused because I had to keep checking if Rem had officially joined the crew or not
> 
> Rem is steadily realising xe’s crushing on Gin. I’ve never had a serious crush so uh 
> 
> GUESS WHO FORGOT HE’D WRITTEN PART FIVE ALREADY FOR **TWO MONTHS**
> 
> Comments and kudos appreciated
> 
> ~throw a kudos to your author, oh valley of plentyyyy~

**Author's Note:**

> every time I hear "decisions" i get flashbacks to that Minecraft hunger games song
> 
> i don't know why karn knows gin so well so quickly it just be like that sometimes
> 
> in the words of me in my story notes from two months ago: " _Karn was bullshitting the entire time. If you think he knows what the hell he was talking about, you’re wrong. He had no fucking clue how to explain Gin’s instant “I’d Die For You” vibes verbally without sounding like a dumbass so he just went with any examples of the vibes he could think of. He hadn’t even looked at Gin and Rem together._ "


End file.
